Game modes

Link▶️ If that's the kind of fight they want, then I will give it to them!

— Legion Commander

”

Game modes are a set of restrictions within which the game of Dota 2 can be played. Most game modes alter how heroes are picked by players. There are also some novelty modes that allow 1v1 play, or give a player a new hero every time they die, for example. Game modes are unlocked by increasing your profile level, with all modes being unlocked at level 10. In addition to standard game modes, Dota 2 also supports Custom Games created by the community.

The All Pick mode in ranked matches works different than the regular All Pick mode, and is called "Ranked Matchmaking".

At first, every player has 15 seconds to vote for a hero to get banned.

All players select a hero at the same time.

A hero may only be voted once. Two players cannot vote for the same hero.

The game displays heroes as they are voted on, but not who voted.

After the 15 seconds, half of the heroes that were voted on get randomly selected and banned.

The number of bans is equal to half the total number of votes. If there is an odd number of votes, the number of bans is randomly rounded up or down.

The random ban selection chooses at most 3 heroes from one specific team's votes, so it is more evenly split.

Right after the banning phase, the picking phase begins.

Teams have up to 25 seconds to pick a hero. If the timer expires, each player that hasn't selected a hero loses 2 gold per second. The selection will stay on this team until a hero is picked.

Once a selection is made, it immediately switches to the other team to pick.

Initial starting team is random, but known at the start of the strategy period.

If a team has not picked and continued losing gold for more than 30 seconds, a player that hasn’t picked is assigned a random hero and the turn resumes to the other team.

If one player disconnects in this stage before picking a hero, turns continue and other players are able to spawn after 30 seconds of his turn to pick. That player is assigned a random hero upon their reconnect.

If a player does not enter battle with his hero until after the 0:00 mark, that player's gold is removed and distributed to all of the players on his team. Similar to if he had abandoned, but it does not count as an abandon for the sake of the game being safe to leave.

Randoming: Players can choose to random a hero from All heroes except their 25 least played ones.

Players take turns choosing from a pool of 50 random heroes.Radiant and Dire players take turns picking from a pool of 50 random heroes. Players are given 20 seconds to make each choice. The starting team is always the same.

Each team's captain bans and chooses heroes for the team.
Captains mode is the standard format for tournament games. The captains ban certain heroes, up to six per team, preventing either team from picking the hero. The captain also chooses five heroes for their team. After the captains choose five heroes, each player chooses a hero from their captain's selections. 35 seconds are allotted for bans, and 35 seconds for picks. Each captain has 130 seconds total bonus time that can be used throughout any selection. If time runs out during a ban selection, no hero will be banned; if time runs out during a pick selection, a random hero will be chosen. In Unranked matchmaking, The player that clicks the "become captain" button first is the captain; In Ranked, the captain is the player on each team with the highest solo MMR. The starting team is randomly selected in matchmaking; if playing in a private lobby a starting team may be specified. Some heroes that were recently created or tweaked are unavailable in Captains Mode; they will be added eventually.

Captains ban and choose from a selection of 27 heroes.
Each team's captain bans three heroes, then they take turns picking five heroes for their team. Heroes are chosen from a pool of 27 random heroes: 9 Strength heroes, 9 Agility heroes, and 9 Intelligence heroes. Each captain has 180 seconds total to make all selections. The player that clicks the "become captain" button first is the captain. The starting team is randomly selected in matchmaking; if playing in a private lobby a starting team may be specified. All heroes are available in Captains Draft.

Play with heroes suitable for new players.
Select from a pool of heroes designated for beginners. Playing Limited Heroes matches used to be part of the tutorial, this is no longer the case. There are no punishments for leaving a game, and bots will replace players who leave.

Play a hero with four abilities selected from a random pool of abilities.
Players are given a random hero from Ability-Draft enabled heroes. Each players' abilities are put into a pool. Players take turns selecting abilities from the pool, given five seconds for each choice. Each player selects three normal abilities and one ultimate.

1 Disabled for balance reasons.2 Non-ultimate spells which require more than one ability slot are disabled because of hotkey issues. Only ultimates may use a second ability slot, but not a third.3 Spells which switch between melee and ranged for are all disabled for technical reasons.4 Spells which have direct synergy/interaction with other spells are disabled, as they are deemed too weak on their own, or too limiting.5 Some spells granted by Aghanim's Scepter are disabled for various reasons.6 According to game files: "//infest does not grant control, this causes infest to be sort of useless"7 Unknown reasons.

Play 1v1 against another player in the middle lane.
Practice your mid-lane play against another player. The first player to achieve two kills or destroy an enemy tower wins. Players can pick identical heroes, and cannot see their opponent's hero choice until they have made a selection. Only the middle lane will spawn creeps. Each player starts off with a courier, free of charge.

Players receive a random hero when they respawn after dying. First team to exhaust either teams 40 respawns, reach 45 kills on either team, or when the Ancient is destroyed, wins.
At the start of a match, every player is given a random hero. When a player dies, they are given a new random hero upon respawning, all of the players' previous reliable gold and items, including the Hero levels are kept for the new Hero. Each team has a total of 40 respawns. The game ends when a team has no respawns left and all its players are dead, or the ancient is destroyed.

When selling items, you get 85% of the purchase price.

You can see your next hero (and level abilities up) as soon as your current hero dies.

You can buyback if you click on your hero portrait at the top, and from there you can buyback.

Creeps only spawn in the middle lane. Duplicate heroes allowed.
Similar to 1v1 Solo Mid but less restrictive. Creeps only spawn in middle lane, and players are allowed to select the same hero. Any amount of players can play, and the game only ends when either team's ancient is destroyed.

Diretide 2012 features invulnerable buildings, new tough creeps called Roshlings on each lane, and a candy bucket in each team's ancient creep camp. The game mode has two phases, the first goal being to collect candy and to return it to your team's candy bucket. Candy can be obtained from Roshlings or neutral creeps, or stolen from enemy heroes or the enemy bucket. After some time, Roshan will begin roaming the map, chasing random heroes and attacking them until they die or feed him a piece of candy. When the first phase ends, the team with the most candy stored wins, and Roshan settles in one of the jungle camps, beginning the second phase. All heroes receive a substantial amount of gold to spend on items and both teams must now work together to kill Roshan for the match to end. Roshan has much higher health and an arsenal of deadly abilities at his disposal. All players receive a Greevil Egg upon completion of a Diretide 2012 match.

Most of the rules are the same as Diretide 2012, however the Roshan fight plays differently. All heroes receive unlimited gold with which to purchase items. Roshan has gained additional, more powerful abilities. When Roshan dies, he comes back stronger, gaining more health each time he is defeated, with the match ending when the timer runs out.

The Greeviling features invulnerable buildings, no lane creeps and neutral Greevil camps with unique abilities that occasionally appear in the jungle. Players are given the Greevil Whistle, which allows them to transform their hero into a selected Greevil from the player's inventory, with abilities and stats based on which essences were applied to its Greevil Egg before hatching. The goal of the game mode is to clear out 11 neutral Greevil camps before the enemy team. Each cleared camp spawns a gift which sends random items to a random hero on the map.

Wraith-Night is a mode where a team of 5 players must defeat 13 waves of creeps and prevent Skeleton King's altar from being destroyed. The last wave features a reborn Wraith King, which must be defeated 3 times to complete the wave. The match ends if Wraith King is defeated, Skeleton King's altar is destroyed, or if all 5 players are dead.

The Year Beast is occasionally available during the New Bloom Festival 2014. In this game mode, five players must attempt to inflict as much damage as possible to the Year Beast. The round ends when the timer runs out or all players are dead. Rewards are based on how much damage was inflicted.

Replay matches from The International 2013 with the same picks.
This game mode was available to Compendium owners, and allowed them to replay certain matches from The International 2013. Players can choose from the five heroes that were picked by the competing teams playing in the original match.

Play an unranked match with random game modifiers'
This game mode was available to The International 2018 Battle Pass owners. Players could queue for an unranked match with three random game modifiers that greatly changes Dota 2's mechanics.

The Weekend Battle Cup is a weekly tournament available during certain tournament events. It compromises eight teams in a competing in a single bracket format. Winners of the Battle Cup earn temporary awards depending on the event.

To enable game modes other than those listed under Find Match, type dota_match_game_modes ## in the Dota 2 console, where ## is the number of the game mode from the list below. Some of these modes (such as Diretide) are only playable in a local lobby or ranked matchmaking.

dota_match_game_modes takes a number as a parameter, which, when converted to binary acts like a switch (e.g. 1048576 is 100000000000000000000 in binary). Each zero/one is a switch to enable each game mode. In layman's terms you can enable and disable game modes by adding the numbers together. For example, to play All Pick and Single Draft you would do calculate 2 + 16 = 18 and put 18 with the console command.

Implemented a new mode for observers -zm (-zoommode). It pulls the camera outwards to see more action at the same time.

Implemented a new game mode -cp (-capturepoint)

This game mode requires more teamwork and coordination than you might expect from your usual funmode.

After 10 minutes, 6 capture points appear at fixed locations around the map. Once the capture points are created, those areas are permanently visible to both teams for the rest of the game.

To capture a point, you have to be standing on it for a certain amount of time. The more heroes standing on it the faster you gain control over it. There cannot be any enemy heroes at a point you are trying to capture. With 5 heroes it requires 12.5 seconds to capture (60 for just 1 hero). Heroes cannot be invisible while on a capture point area. Illusions do not count as heroes when on top of a Capture Point.

There are 3 types of capture points, if you get 2 of the same type then they stack. Duplicates of each type are available on opposite sides of the map.

The game announces when an enemy captures a point. It is also visible on the minimap which areas you have captured and which areas the enemy has. When you capture a point, your team's heroes gain bonuses to various attributes (described below)

Combat - CP Type 1 [Bonus Damage/Armor]: Increases your Damage by 14 and Armor by 4 (Twice of each if you have both)

Switch now only works as long as the items of the leaver remain intact. Once someone leaves, the inventory of that hero becomes locked. Players can use an -unlock command, but once that is done switch cannot be used on that hero anymore. Once this feature is used enough to be considered stable, switch will be usable by default (-so mode won't be required) with the restrictions described above. The gold that the leaver is carrying is also frozen until the hero is either unlocked or swapped.

Restored -mc, but with more detailed statistics to match up with the recently changed Multicast chance system

24 Heroes are randomly allocated in a circle (like RD). The 24 consist of 8 random Intelligence/Agility/Strength heroes, sorted in that order along the circle.

Each team has a total time bank of 2.5 minutes. Blue/Pink draft the heroes for their entire team.

Blue and Pink start off by alternating 1/1/1/1 ban picks.

It then goes into a 1/2/2/2/2/1 hero draft.

Once a hero picks/bans a hero, it immediately switches to the other player to act.

Your timer is shown in red when it is your turn to act.

I am considering implementing a new order for the bans for this mode in the future. The bans would not all happen before the pick process, it would be in between picks. I decided to keep it the traditional way for now and get some feedback on alternatives.

Added a new game mode -rs (-randomside) to randomize which side your team starts in. This does not shuffle the players. It just places a team randomly as either Sentinel or Scourge.

Added -random Intelligence/Strength/Agility. It gives you 100 less bonus gold than the 250 bonus gold the regular -random gives you.

This temporary mode changes the rune system to a more experimental one. I will be changing how -er works from version to version to try out different ideas. I don't plan on any one version of the new runes to replace the current system directly, so do not panic. Well Instead, it will be used as something to create discussion, spark ideas, find flaws and playtest different concepts over time.

How -er works for this version: Runes spawn simultaneously on both sides at 3 minute intervals (instead of 2). Again I have no plans to make this permanent.

Blue and Pink are the team captains. A random side starts the process (you can customize this, see below)

Ban Time: 40. Pick Time: 60. Extra Time: 45.

You start by alternating 1/1/1 in the ban phase. Each captain removes up to 4 heroes. Running out of time does not result in a random hero ban.

After that you enter the 1/2/2/ pick phase. Each captain picks the heroeshis team will use.

If at any time you run out of time, you start to use up your extra time. If you run out and you are in pick phase, you get a random hero.

Creeps spawn 90 seconds after the pick draft phase is over. Right after the hero pick phase ends, the 5 heroes for your team are presented with a checkmark on them (RD style) allowing players on your team to pick which one they want to be.

The captain that starts this process is random. If you want to give the starting to Sentinel, type -cm 1 or -cm 2 for Scourge after the game mode is entered.

The picks, bans, timers, etc are all presented in a board for easy viewing by team mates and observers.

Added a new mode -fastrespawn (-fr) that causes respawns to take half as much time

If blue isn't playing, the next available color will be allowed to enter the game mode.

Improved the game mode entering system. Modes are now entered on one line like "-apidsh" or "-dm -ar -sc". You do not need to worry about the order you enter the modes in, the game will handle it or warn you (and give you another chance) if the mode is incorrect/incompatible.

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